


Guide!Thomas Miscellany

by Alex51324



Series: Guide Thomas [3]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 14:39:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3533108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alex51324/pseuds/Alex51324
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bits and pieces in the Guide Thomas universe.  In Chapter One, Thomas has a cold and Gerald and Simon bicker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. As we used to do

Gerald came out of the dressing room, smoothing his tie. “I’m just going down to the village with Georgie. You’ll be all right, won’t you?” 

Coughing feebly, Thomas said, “When I am but stronger, we can walk upon the moors as we used to do,” and collapsed artistically against the sofa-cushions, where he had been ensconced for some time, nursing a head-cold.

“What,” said Gerald, wondering for a moment if Thomas’s cold had escalated into fever and delirium. 

Picking himself up off the sofa cushions, Thomas brandished a novel and said, “The Guide in this book Ludmilla lent me is always saying rubbish like that. I think I’ve found the limit of how much soppiness I can stand.”

“Doesn’t sound like your sort of thing,” Gerald agreed. “Now—Ludmilla, which one is she?” Gerald knew perfectly well who she was—new housemaid and one of the Gareth Owenses, whose brother worked in the gardens—but Thomas had his own ways of describing people.

“The one who wears her hair like a cocker spaniel,” Thomas answered, then fell into a fit of genuine coughing. 

Gerald paused to pat his back. “I know just the one you mean.” Her hair had a bit of a wave to it, like that on the ears of a cocker spaniel, and the way she wore it down over her own ears tended to emphasize the resemblance. 

“Rum sort of book for a girl to read,” Thomas added. 

“Isn’t it a love story?” It certainly sounded like it.

“Seems to be, but they’re both blokes.”

“Well,” Gerald said, and stopped. They both knew novels like that _existed_ —but yes, it was an odd sort of thing for a maid to read. 

“And nothing in it for the law to disapprove of, except a lot of soppy declarations of devotion,” Thomas added. “I gather it’s working up to a touching death-scene, not a twixt-stairs marriage. Seems to be consumptive, the poor sod.”

“That a medical opinion, Doctor Barrow?” Gerald asked lightly, and immediately wondered if it was a mistake—Thomas so hated to be made fun of.

But he only said, “No, a literary one. The people who write this sort of trash seem to think it’s a romantic disease; God knows why.”

“Well, it makes you pale,” Gerald suggested. 

“So’s pernicious anemia,” Thomas said crankily, which Gerald decided to take as a sign he was feeling a bit better. “Go on, then, don’t leave her ladyship waiting.”

“I’ll stop in the lending library and see if I can’t find something better for you to read,” Gerald promised, and took himself off.

But when he made his way downstairs, he found waiting in the hall not just Georgie and Margery, hats on and gloves in hand as expected, but also Simon, and Louis hovering behind him with Simon’s coat over his arm. “ _There_ he is,” said Simon. 

“Oh, are we making a party of it?” Gerald asked. “How jolly.”

“The roadster’s feeling a bit under the weather,” Georgiana explained. “The magneto, or something. And Margery doesn’t feel up to driving the saloon car.”

Margery added, “So Louis was kind enough to say he’d see if Lord Simon minded him driving us.”

“And my lord said he thought he’d come along as well,” Louis contributed.

“Only I didn’t realize you were coming, until we were all standing here waiting for you,” Simon finished. “Haven’t you got to be dabbing cologne on Thomas’s fevered brow, or something?”

“He is feeling much better, thank you for asking,” Gerald said sharply. “As we’re all here now, shall we go?”

There was a bit of tussle over places in the car; eventually they ended up with Margery sitting up front by Louis—not the arrangement Gerald would have chosen, but naturally Simon wouldn’t think of sitting by the driver, even if it would have been the most comfortable arrangement for everyone, never mind that the driver was his own Guide. Gerald also suspected that it wasn’t anything like an accident when, in the process of getting himself settled, Simon struck him across the shins with his walking stick. “Oh, dear. Clumsy me.”

“Think nothing of it,” Gerald said through gritted teeth. “How lucky that my artificial leg took the brunt of it.” 

The village being only a distance of some three miles, they did at least manage to make it there without actual bloodshed, which Gerald supposed was something.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It turns out the Sentinel world has its own holiday customs, and a misunderstanding results for Thomas and Gerald. Takes place after "Thomas and the Society of Sentinels," but before "Pack Up Your Troubles."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I was writing this, I had to go back to the first two stories to check on names and so on, and made myself this little reference list, which I will share just in case some readers have not committed to memory all of the OCs and their relationships. 
> 
> Gerald, Lord Pellinger—Thomas Barrow  
> Lady Georgiana (Sister of Gerald), "Georgie"—Margery  
> Lord Simon (Brother of Gerald)—Louis  
> Lady Yernemuth (Mother of Gerald)—Felicity  
> Lord Yernemuth (Father of Gerald)—Baxter*  
> Lady Matilda (sister of Lord Y)—Eileen  
> Lady Sophia (wife of Lord Simon)—Maud  
> Dennis and Louisa (Son and daughter of Simon)--Nanny, not named yet (I think)  
> Various horses--Clint
> 
> *No relation--he was named this before there was a Baxter in canon, and it's his first name.

It started when Thomas went down for the breakfast tray. He noticed Margery standing near the foot of the stairs, her head turned at an unusual angle, while Ludmilla said, “They’re that lovely, Margie.” When she turned her head the right way round again, Thomas saw that she was wearing earrings—coloured stones, first thing in the morning, _really_ —but didn’t think much of it at the time. He didn’t even notice what day it was, until he saw some of the housemaids giggling over little envelopes, and then he thought to himself, very firmly, what a relief it was to be shot of all _that_ sort of intrigue.

Then later on in the day he saw Felicity sporting a broach he couldn’t remember seeing before, and Maud showing off a necklace, blushing and saying a demure, “yes,” when Margery asked if it was new. It would have been impossible _not_ to notice that Louis had a new watch-chain, what with the way he seemed to be checking the time whenever anyone so much as glanced in his direction. But the absolute last straw was Baxter—of all possible people—shyly taking a book out of his pocket and displaying the inscription to Eileen as they waited to collect luncheon trays from the kitchen. 

It was just barely credible that every other Guide in the place had a secret sweetheart, Thomas thought, but not Baxter, who barely ever seemed to say a word to anyone who wasn’t Lord Yernemuth. Taking the tray with his own and his lordship’s lunch, Thomas stomped upstairs, and before his lordship could ask what was wrong, said, “So I take it there’s something about Guides and St. Valentine’s Day that I don’t know.”

“Oh,” said his lordship. “Well, yes,” he said, and launched into an explanation of how “the historical St. Valentine—though of course there’s some question as to whether such a person ever really existed”—was known for, among other things, the conversion to Christianity of a certain Roman Sentinel, who then rescued several Guides who were slated to be thrown to lions for some reason or another, and while this likely-apocryphal event was entirely unconnected to the equally-probably-apocryphal deeds which had led to the association of the Saint with courtly love, over the generations, things had become a bit muddled, and it just so happened that the gifts with which Sentinels tended to present their Guides on this occasion more-or-less resembled those typically given to sweethearts on the same date. 

His lordship said all this rather breathlessly, and sat looking at Thomas as though he were a bit of ordnance which might choose this moment to go off. 

“I see,” Thomas said, and went about putting the luncheon things on the table. 

“And—well, I suppose I should have mentioned it, but it seemed like one of those things you might not like.” 

Given that he _had_ exploded, only a few months before, upon observing a similarity between how Sentinels chose their Guides and how ordinary people courted, Thomas supposed it was not entirely unfair for his lordship to come to that conclusion. And if that meant that everyone else was getting presents today and he wasn’t, he supposed he had only himself to blame. 

#

Perhaps, Gerald thought, he ought to have warned Thomas about the St. Valentine’s Day business in advance. He’d been right, apparently, that it was the sort of thing Thomas wouldn’t like, but he oughtn’t to have supposed that, if Gerald said nothing about it, Thomas would fail to notice something going on. He was observant like that. And, since he was bound to notice, he would probably have liked to be warned in advance what was going to happen, and to know that Gerald wasn’t planning to embarrass him with any unseemly displays. 

Well, at least they weren’t having an actual _row_ about it; it was just a matter of Thomas being rather stiff and quiet. Several times over the course of luncheon Gerald had to restrain himself from asking Thomas what was wrong, and what he’d like Gerald to do about it. The honest answer, if Thomas unbent himself enough to give it, would be that Gerald could mind his own bloody business, and since he knew that, he might as well just get on with doing so. 

He hoped that the afternoon ride would provide a distraction, and it might have, if Clint hadn’t taken it into his head to braid up the horses’ manes with flowers—“in honor of the day, you know.” Whether he was imagining that they were sweethearts or Guides, Gerald thought it best not to ask—and, now that he had put it that way in his mind, rather hoped Clint hadn’t thought it through, either way.

It might have happened that, seeing Valentine’s Day observances extended beyond courting couples in another way, Thomas would find it in himself to not let the matter bother him anymore, but—Thomas being Thomas—the sight of the flowers seemed to disquiet him even further. As they rode, he picked them out of Gypsy’s mane and left them scattered on the path, claiming, when Clint protested, that they got in the way of the reins. 

“But they don’t,” Clint said. “I made sure of it.” He turned to Gerald in mute appeal. 

“Mine aren’t in the way,” he said. “But you know Thomas hasn’t been riding long.” He wasn’t sure what that had to do with anything, really, but Clint seemed a bit less affronted, anyhow. “And you’d have had to take them out after, when you rub the horses down. You wouldn’t leave them standing in braids.” It was bad for the hair, Gerald knew—Clint had told him as much, explaining why the horses had to be braided up on hunt mornings, instead of the night before. 

“Well, no, I wouldn’t,” Clint admitted. “But I was going to put them on the stalls, like, so they could see ‘em the rest of the day.”

“I’ll have the gardener send down some more flowers for Gypsy, shall I?” Gerald suggested desperately.

Thomas made a disdainful sound. “They’ll only eat them, you know,” he said to Clint, rather unpleasantly.

“I picked ones that aren’t poisonous to ‘orses,” Clint protested. “In case they did.”

Thomas opened his mouth to argue further, but before he could, Gerald cut in, “It looks like the path has dried out, finally—shall we canter?” It wasn’t the nicest of possible suggestions, as Thomas wasn’t particularly comfortable riding at any pace above a walk, but if Thomas was thoroughly occupied with not falling off his horse, he’d have to stop talking, and that seemed the only way to keep the peace. 

So in the end, all that was to be said for the ride was that nobody actually _did_ fall off, which Gerald supposed was something, at least. They muddled through the rest of the afternoon until, when tea-time neared, Gerald allowed as how he thought he’d go down to the gallery to take it. 

Given that it seemed to be one of those times when Gerald’s very presence was an irritant, he expected Thomas would take advantage of the opportunity to have a little time to himself. But instead, Thomas snapped shut the novel he was reading and said grimly, “Let’s go, then.”

“You don’t have to come if you don’t like to,” Gerald couldn’t help reminding him, as they made their way down the stairs. 

“I know.”

Very well, then—on his head be it. Nearly everyone had turned out for tea today, glittering trinkets very much in evidence on most of the Guides, and naturally one had to admire them, no matter how aware one was of one’s own Guide huffing like a steam-engine at one’s shoulder. He rather thought Georgie had outdone herself in the matter of ear-rings—where _would_ Margery find to wear them?—but Margery seemed pleased enough with them, which was, after all, the point. 

To make matters worse, Simon and Louis—tucked up in a corner whispering at each other—seemed to be glancing their way more often than was really necessary, so as to leave little doubt as to the subject of the whispers. Gerald could just _tell_ it was getting Thomas’s back up, and he was gloomily certain that Simon knew it, too, but damned if there was anything he could do about it, unless he wanted to say, “Mama, brother won’t stop _looking_.” 

Then things went from bad to worse, when, ostensibly on the way to the tea-trolley for a second cup, Louis made rather a noticeable detour to pause by them and say, “Is something wrong, Thomas?”

In a mood like this, Thomas was likely to regard such a question from _anyone_ as a provocation and an insult, but given it was _Louis_ , Gerald was inclined to agree with him. Thomas looked at Louis, absolutely expressionless, long enough for Gerald to imagine several ways he might respond, each more disastrous than the last, but in the end Thomas only said, very deliberately, “No.” 

“Oh,” Louis said, toying with a rather gaudy watch-chain that Gerald supposed Simon had to have chucked at him today. 

“That new?” Thomas said accusingly. The words were precisely the sort of thing Guides said, in order to give their friends an opportunity of showing off a gift. Thomas would have had plenty of opportunity to observe the ritual, today. Gerald wondered if he was actually making an effort to do the thing as it was done. On balance, probably not, but it was difficult to tell, with Thomas. 

“What, this? Oh, yes. From Simon, you know.”

“Thought maybe you’d been named Lord Mayor.”

No, definitely not trying to be polite. 

Louis’s smile faltered. “I’ll just—” He gestured toward the tea trolley, and took himself off in that direction. 

Thomas had just begun to settle down again when Eileen came over. She wasn’t quite as dotty as Aunt Matilda, but she was a little short-sighted, and Gerald could see disaster coming from the way she squinted over Thomas as she said, “So lovely to see you with us today, Thomas. Lady Matilda was saying, she supposes you must be over all that silliness from before.” 

Even on a _good_ day, Thomas would not have taken well to hearing his insistence—thankfully temporary—on being Gerald’s _valet_ rather than his Guide referred to as “that silliness.” “Was she,” Thomas said icily. “I wasn’t sure anyone had noticed.”

Before Gerald could really mull on that, Eileen rolled on, merrily as a steamroller, and nodded at Thomas’s cufflinks, saying, “Are those new?”

At this point, Gerald would not have been at all surprised if Thomas had broken into a million pieces and flown up the chimney, but instead he said only, “They aren’t, as it happens.”

“Oh, dear,” Eileen said, taking a fresh look at him for some other trinket that she had missed.

“But thank you for asking,” Thomas added. 

And that suddenly, all the little details of the day stirred themselves up in Gerald’s mind, settling down again in an entirely new pattern. He opened his mouth to explain himself, then shut it again quickly when he realized that, even though the misunderstanding was largely on Gerald’s side, the last thing Thomas would want to do was discuss it in public. Instead, he babbled something reassuring in Eileen’s direction—he wasn’t sure what it was, only that it seemed to satisfy her—and made their excuses to depart as quickly as they reasonably could. _This_ , at least, he could fix, though it might be delicate work.

Going up the stairs, Thomas maintained a dignified—not to say resentful—silence, which gave Gerald plenty of time to think over exactly how he wanted to arrange things. Despite getting hold of the wrong end of the stick earlier, Gerald was still confident in thinking that Thomas would want the thing done with as little fuss as possible, and absolutely no expectation for him to discuss his feelings if he didn’t want to, so upon reaching their rooms, Gerald sat down at the writing-desk, without saying much of anything about it. It ended up taking a fair amount of rummaging before he found the little box from the jeweler’s shop—Gerald had stowed the thing way to the back, so Thomas wouldn’t come across it when looking for stamps or something like that. By the time he had it in hand, Thomas had gone back to his book, turning the pages in a rather pointed way. 

If the circumstances had been at all different, Gerald would have called Thomas over to take the thing from him, but he thought even that might be making too much of a ceremony of it, so he slipped the box into his vest pocket while he went about the dreary business of standing up and getting his crutch all arranged—he was down to one, now, but still needed both hands to steady himself getting up. He went over to the sofa, nudged the thing onto the table by Thomas’s elbow, next to the ash-tray, saying, “I wasn’t entirely sure whether you’d want this or not, so I’ll just leave it here, and you can decide what you want to do about it,” and then returned to the desk chair.

He made rather a show of putting back all the things he’d disarranged while looking for the jeweler’s box, and of keeping his eyes on his work. But he couldn’t help _listening_ , and after a moment there was a rustle of cloth, and the slight scrape of the pasteboard box against the wood of the table. Then the slide of the grosgrain ribbon against itself, and a _palpable_ lessening of tension in the air, like the onset of a rain that had been threatening all day. 

When Gerald decided to risk a glance in the direction of the sofa, Thomas had his jacket off, and was fitting the new links into his cuffs. “They’re all right, then?” he asked. 

“Yes,” Thomas said. “They’re quite nice.” He finished putting them in and shrugged back into his jacket. “Thanks.”

“Good,” Gerald said, and that was that. 

On reflection, he decided that it was just as well things had worked out as they had. If he’d given Thomas the cufflinks in the morning, Thomas would likely have responded much the same way, and Gerald might well have felt obscurely disappointed—even though he knew full well that Thomas simply wasn’t the sort to, say, fall on one’s neck and cover one with burning kisses. And then they’d have spent the day being polite to each other, and Gerald would never have been quite sure what Thomas thought of the whole thing. 

But now, after what had been an indisputably _Thomas_ sort of day, Gerald was quite in the frame of mind to realize that _They’re quite nice, thanks_ was exactly the sort of thing Thomas would say when he really _was_ pleased. 

Yes, it wasn’t such a bad day after all.  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before anyone gets too excited about two snippets in one day, the next "chapter" is really a missing scene from this one--and it's Simon and Louis being bitchy together, so I'm not sure how many people are interested.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What _were_ Lord Simon and Louis whispering to each other about during Tea in the Gallery? Let's find out...

“Wondered if they were going to show up,” Simon muttered when his brother and his Guide came in, the latter grim as an undertaker. 

“I’m surprised,” Louis admitted. “Himself’s in a bit of a temper today.”

“I wonder why that could be.” Surely not for any lack of Gerry bending over backwards to make sure the Guide’s every whim was catered to. “Don’t see any new baubles on him,” Simon noted. 

“Hm,” Louis said, smoothing his new watch-chain. 

Simon had gone to a bit more trouble than he usually did, over that—just because Louis didn’t go around making a spectacle of himself, dressing conspicuously and changing his mind one day to the next about whether he was a Guide or not, didn’t mean he wasn’t just as good as anybody else’s Guide. But doubtless Gerry would find some way to outdo him, no matter what Simon did. “What is it, then? Motorcar? Live elephant, complete with castle and native groom?” After the performance at Christmas, Simon wouldn’t put anything past him—and Gerald really _had_ given Euan a motorcar once, though that might have been for his birthday.

“I’m not sure he’s got anything, actually,” Louis answered. “He hasn’t mentioned it. And at Christmas, he wouldn’t let five minutes pass without finding some reason to mention his tailor’s appointment.”

Simon wondered again if he ought to have _his_ tailor make a suit for Louis, now. When he’d brought it up before, Louis had—quite sensibly—pointed out that he didn’t need one, since unlike some people, he was perfectly happy to wear the house’s livery. “Maybe Valentine’s Day is too ordinary for Thomas, and he’s decreed it’s to be St. Swithun’s Day or nothing.”

“Spring Bank Holiday, maybe,” Louis suggested. “Or—I know, isn’t there a Saint Thomas?”

“Don’t say that where Gerry can hear, or if there isn’t, there will be soon. Dear Thomas, it’s ever such an imposition to ask him to live under our roof and eat our bread and salt, and be paid a handsome wage to condescend to occasionally be in the same room as my brother, something special _ought_ to be done.” He shook his head and went on, “Granted, given a choice between prison and being yoked to Gerry, I’m not sure which _I’_ d pick, so maybe there’s something in it after all.” With a sudden inspiration, he added, “Do you suppose, if one got to know him—the Thomas excrescence, I mean—it would turn out that the whole reason he’s bucked up such a fuss is that he sees Our Gerry for the sanctimonious, halo-polishing nitwit that he really is?”

Louis appeared to give this serious thought, but finally said, “No, I don’t think it’s quite like that, really.” 

Simon sighed. “Oh well.” He studied Thomas again. “But he must have given him something.”

“I’ve an idea,” Louis said,

Simon looked at him expectantly.

“Let’s talk about something other than Lord Gerry, for a bit. Since we’re agreed he’s far less important than everyone else in this household seems to think he is.”

“Oh, all right. Suppose I’ve been a bore about it. But you know how I get.”

“Yes, I know. Now, Louisa, she seems very advanced for her age, doesn’t she? Sitting up and everything. I don’t think Dennis did that until he was months older.”

“It’s lucky I’ve still got _some_ rights,” Simon said. “If we’d had to put it to a vote, the poor thing would be named Thomasina.” 

Louis frowned at him. “I thought you said Lady Sophia chose that, after her aunt.”

Well, naturally that was the explanation he’d put out for public consumption. “She had five or six choices, for names. I said I liked that one.” He sipped tea. “Can’t imagine why.”

Louis shook his head, but he was smiling. 

“I need some more tea,” Simon added, handing him the cup. “And while you’re at it, talk to them and find out what Thomas got. I need to know.”

Louis rolled his eyes. “As my lord commands.”


End file.
